Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday December 17, 2012 @02:52PM
from the picking-up-the-pieces dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Here's some breaking news I saw MSNBC this morning that I haven't seen reported anywhere in the print media yet. NBC reporter Pete Williams reported on Chuck Todd's The Daily Rundown that (police) 'had been hopeful that they could extract some information from the computer at (Lanza's) home. He was very into computers. Before he left his mother's house on the morning that he shot his mother while she was sleeping, he damaged extensively his computer. He took the hard drive out, pulled the disk out, and did a lot of damage to it,' said Williams. 'It's not clear that (police) are going to be able to extract any information or not.' It has previously been reported that Lanza left no online footprint. Police had been eager to examine Lanza's computer in hopes of determining a motive in his killings or finding records of purchases of firearms and ammunition. 'If he visited certain websites, they are going to glean whatever information they can from that and see what it means,' said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. 'Does he have friends he communicates with online? Was there a fight with somebody?'"

As other posters have pointed out these things are almost always planned. A guy in China stabbed twenty some people the very same day. Imagine how easy and cheap it would be to put together a few pipe bombs jacketed with small ball bearings; that would create every bit as much horror and death in a room for children as this guy was able to do using guns. You can't control the materials for that either without really crippling society. Any intelligent (though not necessarily sane) person who wants to hurt a large number of people in our society can find a way to do so, with or without a gun.

Guns are not the problem. The real danger is the mentally and our total lack of will to deal with them. This guys mother knew and had talked about him burning himself days before the incident. She obviously understood things were very wrong but did nothing. As a society we at most pump people with dangerous mental pathology full of drugs their own doctors hardly know what effect will have and send them back out among us. In probably the majority of cases we do nothing about them at all. Certainly its true in the 20th century, having people committed was abused. It might be unfair and cruel to lock many of these folks away in psych wards but at least they'd not be out hurting people. Lord knows I don't like health care reform the way it was done but at least some seriously disturbed people might get near to a profession who could possible declare them a threat and get something done about them.

The problem has two parts: mental illness and guns. In China, with no guns, a mentally ill guy assaults 20 people and none of them are dead. In the US, with prolific guns, a mentally ill guy assaults 28 people, and 26 are dead.

The knee-jerk suggestions for dealing with mental illness amount to preemptive jailing of a large number of people, the vast majority of whom will never assault anyone. The knee-jerk suggestions for dealing with guns amount to taking away tools, the vast majority of which will never be used in anger. Neither of those is right, but the best answer should include aspects of both. Hopefully, some reasonable people can work through the politics and come up with a reasonable solution that addresses not just extremely infrequent mass-violence, but individual shootings which have become so mundane we only hear about them when someone "interesting" is the victim.

“Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns. The U.S. mass murder rate does not seem to rise or fall with the availability of automatic weapons. It reached its highest level in 1929, when fully automatic firearms were expensive and mostly limited to soldiers and organized criminals.”

The real danger is the mentally and our total lack of will to deal with them. This guys mother knew and had talked about him burning himself days before the incident. She obviously understood things were very wrong but did nothing. As a society we at most pump people with dangerous mental pathology full of drugs their own doctors hardly know what effect will have and send them back out among us. In probably the majority of cases we do nothing about them at all.

Please don't be so quick to say that his mother "understood things were very wrong but did nothing". What would you have her do? The guy was legally an adult, and she couldn't possibly have kept a 24-hour watch on him.

A very good friend of mine has a son with schizophrenia; people that only he can see tell him what to do. On several occasions, he has traveled over 1,000 miles because imaginary people told him to. Once he was instructed to drive across country to witness the second coming of Christ. Another time he ended up in the middle of Los Angeles and destroyed his cell phone and wallet so that "they" couldn't track him. He was instructed to set his parents' house on fire while they were at work, causing about $100K of damage and forcing the family to move out for about 6 months while it was repaired.

His parents bend over backwards to try and keep an eye on his condition and get him the help that they are able, but the guy's in his mid-twenties; if he doesn't consent to staying in the hospital more than 72 hours, they can't keep him there. He can walk, drive, or ride a bus just like anyone else. Short of keeping him locked in the basement with no shoelaces or metal utensils, what should they do?

My friend once told me that at least when he's in jail (which happens frequently), he can at least sleep knowing where his son is.

Friends of mine were in the exact same boat. It's a situation without a solution. If the patient is force medicated, they are unable to function in day to day lives. If they get of the meds, it's just a matter of weeks until they land in trouble. The worst thing is, even here in California, there is virtually no State sponsored support for mentally ill people. Ultimately the solution was to send their son to Europe to spend the rest of his life in a live-in/half-way house mental clinic. It's not cheap, but it's a fraction of the cost of what it was here in the states (for a private institution) and based on his facebook updates, he lives a almost normal life.

Firearms account for approximately 18,000 suicides annually in the US and approximately 10,000 homicides.

So, even if we lump in homicides with your suicides AND assume homicides are committed by legal gun owners (which most times they are not): 28,000 is 0.035% of 80 million gun owners in the US, which means it is NOT the "primary purpose of owning a gun". It in fact accounts for a MINISCULE use of firearms.

The primary purposes for owning a gun - BY FAR - NOT EVEN CLOSE - are self defense and sport (including competitive shooting, recreational shooting and hunting).

Also, I suspect that you are misinformed on what an "assault rifle" is which is not your fault since the media spreads so much hysteria and disinformation...

An assault rifle is a marketing term. These rifles function EXACTLY THE SAME as semiautomatic hunting rifles. The only differences are: they look more menacing, have accessory rails and a different grip. You can buy a wooden rifle - not considered an "assault rifle" - which fires the EXACT same caliber bullets, at EXACTLY the same rate with EXACTLY the same capacity.

Also, while you did not mention it here, let me also bring up "high capacity magazines" since a lot of "anti-gun wackos" (as I'll call them) bring these up for argument. The difference between shooting a 30 round magazine and three 10 round magazines is about 4 seconds. With just a small amount of practice, anyone can reload in under 2 seconds.

Yup. Like the detectives who investigated the murder of my last girlfriend, (and I paraphrase) most murders happen to people involved, in some way, in crime. The cops were pissed 'cause she was a "civilian". Violent crime happens mostly to criminals, and the poor.

After that, it's crimes of passion (Yeah, I was the prime suspect for a few hours.)

My girlfriend was innocent, she had a degree from a prestigious university, and was successfully working in her field and building a career. She was 26.

So, numbers are numbers, and there are exceptions. FWIW, no weapons were involved, firearms or otherwise. The Chicago Police caught the murderer a week later. He was convicted 3 years later. He was 17, he'll serve 45 years without parole.

My point is, crime happens. These shootings happen. And they are certainly regrettable. But the news media blow it way out of proportion.

There are too many guns in the U.S., too many arsenals. I'm a gun owner too. But I know we have a problem.

But it's less the guns, than it is the society. There's too much fear in the U.S. That's what the suburban arsenals are all about. Fear. Read a gun or knife forum, these guys talk like they're walking around in a war zone. When in reality, they live in relatively safe communities.

It's not only the fear, it's lack of mental healthcare, and healthcare in general (see the stats on suicide by firearms). It's lack of community. It's lack of social support. It's poverty, unemployment, and anger at not being able to achieve the "American Dream" we all grew up believing in. And the stupid drug laws that put marijuana smokers in hardcore prison for the equivalent of drinking a six-pack. But let's drunk drivers stay on the street.

I heard a psychologist on NPR last week saying that most massive shooting are long time premeditated actions. Almost no shooter just goes crazy take a gun and shoot everybody. They all spend weeks at it.

Which is why mandatory waiting periods are pointless. The wait should be no longer than it takes to make the federally mandated background check-- which apparently somehow needs start taking people's mental health into account. He was only 20, so the known issues he had in school should have been flagged. I imagine the privacy laws in regards to minors may be an issue.

Four isn't exactly an arsenal. And she was into recreational shooting, they weren't just self defense. But she is indeed the answer in that she obviously did not secure her guns well enough from her disturbed son.

The AR-15 is a very common rifle for recreational and competition shooting. "Nut" comment aside, she was ultimately responsible: 1) Not properly securing them, 2) Not just getting rid of them while having an unstable individual living in her house.

The responsibility lies with the nutbag who shot up the school and then committed suicide. It might be nice to try to find some reason or trigger for it, but really it was the actions of one individual performing a heinous act. He took advantage of the situation and executed his twisted plan, or reacted completely insanely, or something in between. While in a situation where he may not have had such easy access to such weapons (for whatever reason) it may not have happened the way it did, but there's no way of knowing for sure that he wouldn't have done something similar another way.

Whatever you think of her gun selection, in firepower or quantity, it seems she gained them legally and behaved with them responsibly. It can surely be argued that no matter how stringent any gun control law, short of completely banning gun ownership, she could have followed all of those more strict laws and still had weapons that her son would then acquire illegally and use incorrectly.

There's no evidence she didn't properly secure her firearms and that he simply defeated said security. Locking something in a gun safe isn't something that would stop a motivated and capable 20-year old. He could surely have known where she kept any locker or trigger-lock keys, and reached them. Short of that any number of tools could have been used to overcome many home gun lockers, especially those meant to keep children safe and not truly secure the weapons.

Some blurb I saw somewhere said that Connecticut only requires locking up firearms when there are minors living in the home, and since he was 20 he was not a minor. Yes, a responsible gun owner should have locked up the weapons regardless, but again, a 20-year old familiar enough with the weapons to do what he did would have surely been able to open said locks.

Additionally, while the actions show in hindsight that he was plenty unstable (tore up first-graders...'nuff said), there's not been convincing evidence presented (that I've seen or read) that indicates he was unstable to the point that one might think he would do what he did. Too many interviews point out "what a quiet person" or "nice fella" or whatever. I'm sure his mother thought she understood whatever was going through his head, as most parents will believe with their kids, even when they're wrong. We'd all like to believe that we'd be able to see the breakdown coming, and even if there was any indication he was about to snap, perhaps she didn't envision he'd snap like this, or on that day.

These are the basic facts. She had legally obtained weapons. He obtained them from her (and killed her with them). He is responsible for the actions that took the lives of those children and their protectors.

1) This kid had mental issues since birth. He had Aspergers and difficulty dealing with others and was a problem kid his whole life.

2) The mother bought these guns to teach her kid how to shoot so he could learn about responsibility. Talk about the stupidest fucking thing you can think of to teach a mentally ill kid responsibility...

3) It's the mother's responsibility to make sure her mentally ill child does not have access to deadly weapons. You can't blame a nut for their actions when everyone knows he's got major problems. If she felt the need to have guns, she should have properly secured them such that he could not get access to them. (Maybe that should be a law?)

In short, his mom was completely irresponsible. If she weren't dead, I'd say she should be prosecuted (at least for being a complete fucking moron).

Maybe you look at this the wrong way, I guess the mother didn't look at guns as self-defence but rather as a hobby. Why does Jay Leno need 100 cars ?

Friend of mine has 5 fire-arms (guns & rifles) and makes his own ammo. If he ever goes mental I'm sure it will make the world-news too... But as far as I can tell he's a sane, laid-back kind of guy with a hobby he practices perfectly within the law. Who am I to deprive him of that ?

And where to draw the line ? Crossbows ? Bows ? Slingshots ? Knives ?IMHO, most people around here (Belgium, strict laws) play with guns for a hobby, few have it for self-defence. AFAIK.

Three weapons is not an "arsenal". When people use that term, I expect to find dozens of weapons, not ten or less. Owning 3 or more shotguns means that you use shotguns to hunt different kind of game - maybe ducks, upland fowl, and squirrels, maybe a twelve guage for slugs to hunt deer.

That small.223 is great for varmints such as groundhog - generally the same person will own one or more larger deer rifles, like a 30-30 or a 30-06.

If our gun enthusiast also goes to target ranges, he may own yet another weapon that has been customized for extreme accuracy..270,.243, or.223 are all great target rounds.

Arsenal. I've only seen three specific weapons mentioned, and some references to an "assault rifle". That "assault rifle" merits some concern, but it's not clear yet what they are referring to. Like as not, some fool has characterized a deer rifle as an "assault weapon", but he may well have been carrying an SKS or something.

As for "why so much ammo" - 100 rounds is no big deal anywhere. Ammo comes in boxes of 20, and it's not uncommon to purchase 2 to 10 boxes at a time. Anyone serious about marksmanship might buy 100 boxes at a time. It only takes several minutes to use up a box, if you're carefully aiming. If you're just having fun, it only takes a minute.

People who ask these questions and make these assumptions are obviously not outdoorsmen.

He wasn't advocating thought crime. His rhetorical question at the end of the final paragraph should have been enough to see that. He was pointing out that sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease, and that what we have isn't even a cure, but a bit of quack medicine.

If you want to stockpile 1000 guns; I think I do as member of this society, have a right to know why.

No, you don't. I don't need to explain to you why I want to exercise my constitutional rights, any more than you need to explain to me why you should be allowed to exercise yours.

Why don't you allow cops to search your house when they ask? Are you hiding something? Why do you need any right to be secure in your person and property unless you've done something wrong? What are you hiding? As a member of this society, I have a right to know why you are invoking the fourth or fifth amendments. Don't I? (Note to readers: that's a rhetorical question intended to make the point that the argument "I have a right to know why you want to..." is specious and patently absurd.)

There is no reason to own many of the guns that are sold,

No reason you understand. Are constitutional rights only valid if you understand why someone wants to exercise them?

And I see absolutely no reason for the conceal carry laws other then

The right of people to defend themselves is a pretty good reason. You don't understand why others use their rights. We get that. Your lack of understanding is really irrelevant to the discussion.

I believe in responsible gun ownership but I don't see how that right is unlimited and unrestricted.

"I don't understand why you want to own a gun" isn't a valid restriction, and there are already quite a number of restrictions that you don't seem to know about. It's hyperbole to claim that gun ownership is "unlimited and unrestricted" just because you don't think they are limited enough to meet your understanding.

What the founders intended is that those that exercise their right to bear arms be members of a regulated militia.

They intended no such thing. They gave one example of why the right to be armed is important, but one example is not the complete list.

Do you think all those founders who had just used their arms against the government were really thinking that the only reason people should be allowed to own a gun was so they could be part of a "well regulated militia" -- i.e., part of the government used to suppress the public should THEY ever be so uppity as to oppose a government they found to be oppressive?

What you are arguing is that the same people who just won their freedom from an oppressive, abusive government were now saying that nobody except the government (in the guise of the "well regulated militia") should have weapons. That's ridiculous.

If all gun owners were compelled to be members of a militia with regulation oversight from that militia (responsible gun owners having veto powers over other members, to legally disarm them...

Well, Mr. President, those people in Tennessee are starting to get riled about those new laws we're forcing on them, you better kick them out of the "militia" and gather up all their weapons...

Noah Webster similarly argued:
Before a standing army can rule the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.

That's a pretty clear statement about the difference between an armed populace and the militias that would be "well regulated" by the state. "The whole body of the people" is much more than any militia, in your terminology, but it truly was "the whole body of the people" to the founders. Continuing from the same article:

The framers thought the personal right to bear arms to be a paramount right by which other rights could be protected. Therefore, writing after the ratification of the Constitution, but before the election of the first Congress, James Monroe included "the right to keep and bear arms" in a list of basic "human rights", which he proposed to be added to the Constitution.

You're now arguing that this "paramount right", what the founders thought was "a basic human right", is really intended to be a way of keeping the populace under control because it should be afforded only to those who are "part of the system", and, when the right is most needed, will be part of the problem.

Over a hundred people die from firearms every day in America. Roughly about 1/3 accidents, 1/3 suicides, and 1/3 deliberate homicides. Dwelling on massacres like Sandy Hook is not really a good idea for many reasons. Most gun homicides are committed with handguns, by people with long records of violent crime, and are done more often than not in heated emotion. But these school massacres fit none of those patterns. They are usually done with rifles, by people that are "odd" and loners but without any record of violent crime, and they are usually meticulously planned. In many ways these make them the hardest violent acts to prevent. We should focus on preventing more on the everyday killings, many of which should be preventable, instead of focusing too much on the black swans where any plausible effort is unlikely to make much difference.

We should try to learn from history: On January 17th, 1989 Patrick Purdy [wikipedia.org] walked into a school yard in Stockton, California, and opened fire on the children playing there, killing five and wounding 29. In the months that followed, legislation was rushed through to outlaw rifles similar in appearance to the one he used. Back in those days, it was common for gun owners to support "common sense" gun control. But they watched gun control advocates, who often claimed that they wanted to restrict handguns and not hunting guns such as rifles and shotguns, use this tragedy to push through bans on rifles and only rifles, and do so on the basis of appearance (shape of the grip, bayonet stud, etc.) rather than functionality. The result had a negligible effect on crime, but resulted in a significant decline in support for gun control in America. There was also a strong political backlash. Many pro-gun-control politicians lost elections, and the urban-rural split between the two major political parties became more pronounced. I really hope that we do something more sensible this time.

Unless you outright ban guns....or possibly legislate it so that only single shot weapons are legal, you're not going to change or do anything.

Only law abiding people follow the laws...criminals, by definition, aren't going to abide by them.

And banning guns tomorrow, totally...would not affect gun crime in the US for decades, there are just too many guns and ammo to be had out there. If you did this...again, only the law abiding would suffer at the hands of criminals which would still be fully and heavily armed.

I'm sorry, shit happens. Crazy people are out there, and will pop up from time to time, and kill lots of people.

Hell, wasn't there recently a killing spree at a grade school in German or somewhere else in Europe where the killing and damage done was with a knife?

Doing nothing would be more sensible than what we did in 1989 in California. Not only was it pointless (banning weapons based on appearance rather than functionality) but was probably downright counter-productive by outlawing thousands of existing guns and pushing them onto the black market.

Right now there is a big push to "do something", and I hope we don't do something that stupid again. I am not an advocate of more gun control, but if we are going to "do something", than it should be aimed at cheap handguns that are used in killings everyday rather than a futile attempt to prevent the next Sandy Hook.

I've only looked around for a minute or two, and here's what I've got:
* The US had roughly 3 gun murders per 100 000 population in one year. (Data from 2008 - 2010)
* The UK had 0.04 per 100 000 population (2011)
* Australia had 0.09 per 100 000 (2008)

The (gun) murder rate in the US is 7.5 times larger than in the UK, and more than 3 times larger than in Australia. This would tend not to support your point. Since you mentioned crime, I did not cite the Suicide and Accidental Death numbers, but they make the US look even worse.

Incidentally, the country with the highest gun homicide rate in the EU (that I could find data for on short notice) was Luxemburg - 0.6 gun murders per 100 000 population (2009). The US gun homicide rate is 5 times larger . . .

Why do people get modded up as insightful for spouting the same old NRA propaganda? Analysing the statistics for violent crime, suicide and accidental deaths is a complicated area of research. Finding localised peaks in violent crime figures does not negate the massive drops in gun incidents we saw in Australia following the effective banning of firearms almost 20 years ago.

And what's with this view that being able to shoot someone who wrongs you is better than the tiny risk of being robbed? Seriously? People with that view are exactly who I don't want having weapons anywhere near me.

If the price of so-called "freedom" is 20 dead children, then either you do not know what freedom is or the price is too high and I no longer wish to be "free".

Roughy 500 kids go permanently missing each year in the USA and are presumed dead. Millions of public monitoring cameras would surely reduce that number. Are you willing to sacrified the freedom to go about your daily business unwatched in order to save an order of magnitude more children? At what point does the price for a child's life become too high for you?

We focus plenty of resources on those everyday homicides. Those homicides are the reason we have security gaurds with guns at the entrances to Banks and not elementry schools. Spending more resources on that problem won't neccesarily change anything. At some point your just harrasing innocent people who fit profiles. It should also be noted that violent crime of that sort has been on a decline. Plus the 1/3 deliberate homicides include plenty of people involved in crimes. If your not sucidal, don't own a gun, and not involved in crime your not at much risk. At some level society doesn't care abuot those deaths.

2009 Cause of death stats by the CDC:Accidental discharge of firearms: 554Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms: 18,735Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms: 11,493Total: 30782Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf

That's 16% less than "over 100 a day" and nowhere near even third splitsA less misleading and sensationalist introduction would be "about 31 people died a day from gun-related homicides."

I honestly don't see guns involved in suicides as an issue as people that want to kill themselves are going to find ways to do it.The number we obviously need to work on is the 11.5k gun homicides, especially when you compare us to other countries.

Well, since any firearm can be used to shoot people dead, let's just talk about how easy it is to buy any firearm. For most firearms for most people in most places, fairly easy. For any firearms for any person with a criminal background or mental illness (to a much lesser extent, as this is usually not reported), pretty difficult to get one legally, but no more difficult to get one illegally than anywhere else. For certain types of firearms (automatic weapons, for example, or crew served weapons), it ranges from very difficult to impossible (legally) for anyone. For certain places, such as Chicago, NYC or Washington DC, it's pretty hard for anyone to get any weapon. Of course, those are also the places with the highest gun violence rates. Odd, that.

YI ask because I do not know - how easy / difficult is it for an adult in the US to buy a gun / rifle / whatever that can be used to shoot people dead?

It is easy. Here is the algorithm:1. Get money.2. Go to store.3. Buy gun.4. Depending on the state, you may need to wait up to 30 days to pick up your gun and take it home.

The seller is required to do an instant background check to make sure you have no criminal record. This only takes a few minutes.

About half of American homes have at least one gun.

I own a Remington 870 pump action shotgun, and an AR-15 assault rifle. I haven't fired the shotgun in over a decade, and the ammo I have is probably too stale to work reliably. I fire the AR-15 annually, and replace all the ammo so that it is fresh. If I have to defend my family (or join in an insurrection) the AR-15 is definitely my weapon of choice because it is functionally identical to an M-16 except for the full auto mode, and I had extensive experience with M-16s during a former employment.

I do not own a handgun, and I never will. There are not safe, especially around kids (I have two), and would be less effective than a rifle in almost any defensive scenario.

If you don't have a felony conviction, or various other disqualifying issues, it takes anywhere from ten minutes to ten days, depending on the locality, to purchase a rifle or handgun.

I'll ask another question - how easy/difficult is it for an adult in your country to buy a knife/car/whatever that can be used to kill people?

These are horrific events, whether they happen in Connecticut or Scotland (http://news.yahoo.com/scottish-town-shares-agony-u-school-tragedy-182038462.html) with guns, or China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010%E2%80%932011)) with knives and hammers. But they pale in comparison with the number and tragedy of single deaths that occur daily. Children are killed in car accidents, playground accidents, by parents, caregivers, and other children, in horrific and tragic ways. But, because they happen one or two at a time, they're a footnote in a local newscast and quickly forgotten. Nothing is done about them.

Heck, even the events of Sept 11, 2001 here in the US were a statistical blip - the 3000 people killed in the attacks are roughly the number of people who die every month in car accidents in the US. And yet we treat it as a national day of mourning, and disassemble our freedoms, to prevent it from happening again.

We as Humans grossly overreact to the extraordinary, and become accustomed to the ordinary. 20 Children killed with a Gun? Time to ban all guns. 40000 infants born in the US every year with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (http://fasdcenter.samhsa.gov/documents/WYNK_Numbers.pdf), and we show a few public service announcements on the TV. Which is the greater tragedy?

My understanding is that Lanza's rifle was left in the car. He only used pistols in the shooting. So in what way does banning semi-automatic rifles help prevent such acts, even presuming it could be successfully done and the existing semi-automatic rifles removed from circulation, which is doubtful?

Of the things you listed, I would definitely support improving mental health care. I have a cousin that had a head injury while he was in the military, and now has many symptoms of schizophrenia and paranoid delusions. I have gone with him to the VA about a dozen times. We never saw the same doctor twice. They will usually prescribe routine treatment, such as Haldol, which is effective against schizophrenia, but actually makes the paranoia worse. We then have to explain to the doctor that we already tried that a decade ago, and perhaps he should take a few minutes to actually read the patients medical history. The amount of waste and duplication is so immense, that I am not sure improving things would even cost more. One cheap way to improve the situation (while cutting costs) would be to empower the nurses, who usually know far more than the doctors about individual patients, to make more decisions, and then fire the dumbest doctors.

Better mental heath would not only reduce gun deaths, but would lower all crime. It has been estimated that half the people in prison have untreated mental conditions. How many of them wouldn't be there if they got treatment earlier? If we spent less on prisons and more on mental health, we would probably come out way ahead.

Crazy people? Tell it to the person in Milwaukee who, on November 21, used his carry weapon to defend himself in a hair salon. Two men knocked, were let in by a customer, then one of the men pulled a gun and aimed it at the customer, who knocked it away and then used his own gun to kill his attacker and wound the attacker's accomplice. Or tell it to the 12 year old Oklahoma girl a couple of months ago, who used the family handgun to defend herself against a home intruder whose history included kidnapping a girl.

How many people did not die in the Clackamas Mall shooting a couple days ago? Apparently a bystander who was legally carrying a handgun for defense confronted the shooter, but did not fire due to presence of bystanders. Handgun vs. rifle is a very frightening disparity, btw.

This should be a reminder to all of us to be that friend he probably didn't have. I'd have killed myself in college if it weren't for a few online friends. Skearrit and Zenobia, that's you. It's WoW now instead of MUDs, but people are the same.

When I want to physically destroy my hard drives, I use bullets. Here's why it works:

The surface of the platters is covered in magnetic data, but in order to read it you have to be able to pass a head over it. If you bend the platters, put a few jagged holes in them, and destroy the bearing center, there is no technology that can run a read head reliably over a data track. If the platters are bent, you can't install them in a new drive or mount new heads. You also can't flatten them to the original tolerances without destroying the magnetic surface coating.

The biggest hand-waving magic people fear is the electon microscope techinques which have been shown to dig up even erased data by looking at the edges of the latest written data to see what was there before. While this is technically possible in ideal conditions, it requires that you can move the platter under the tip of the microscope with incredible precision. Without the platters in perfect physical shape, you'd risk destroying the electron microscope's fragile tip.

Pistol rounds generally dent the platters pretty seriously. Rifle rounds generally punch through leaving jagged holes. A combination of both is a fun day at the range, makes great desk art, and securely pretects your drives from ever being decoded again.

I don't think you actually do this, at least have not in some years. I in fact do tear drives apart and melt the exterior aluminum casting for... casting (duh, nothings a better casting raw material than cast product.. trying to cast extruded alloys is usually an exercise in futility).

Anyway I have the scar on my hand to prove that you don't do that kinda of stuff with modern glass platters, they are not safety glass they pretty much explode into shrapnel. Yes they do bend, in fact they bend pretty well before they shatter. Weird but true. I would hazard a guess that "most" drives bigger than 10 gigs are glass platter and very few below a gig are glass platter. Yes in the 90s they were all metal of various kinds, and made nice windchimes and targets.

One interesting observation is for decades all you need to completely disassemble a hard drive is about 4 torx size screws, like T5, T20 and a couple others. Also the color of platters follows no obvious pattern over the decades due to different chemistry.

But don't go telling kids now a days to smash up their platters, or there's gonna be sharper than razor glass shards everywhere and/or stitches.

I am often confused, and more than just a little alarmed at the polarization that stories like this cause.

On one side, there are the people that would rather live in an Aldus Huxley novel than suffer the slight against their perceptions of safety that allowing the general public access to firearms presents. (Seriously. If there are 100 shootings per day, out of 250 million persons in the USA, your chances of being so shot on any given day are 4 places to the right of the decimal point in terms of percentages-- (borrowed possibly false statistic from previous poster.) At that rate, you are more likely to die in an airline catastrophe. Contemplate that when you advocate stampeeding over peoples rights because kids were involved.)

Then, on the other, you have the people that feel we are already deep inside an aldus huxley novel, and have a "freedom fighter" complex. (The types who wear the tinfoil, you know whom it is of which I speak.)

Where are the people like me, who live in the middle? The people who deplore the senseless death, but who blame a faulted cultue that stigmatizes people with mental health issues, makes care for such insanely unaffordable, and tries to pretend the problem isn't serious? The ones who understand that guns are simply a tool, and the purpose they serve in the hands of the public is a preventative measure against corruption in high places, and nothing more?

The solution to deaths like these is NOT "gun control".

The solution to deaths like this is to get people the help they so desperately need, without any overtones of disparagment, or of belittling the people who need that help.

Outlawing guns does NOT help the mentally ill get the help the need, before they snap and take others with them. It simply sweeps the issue under the rug, because outlawing the tool used for the killing is simply easier. Nevermind that any sense of security the measure brings is false, and endagers more innocent people. (If not a gun, then perhaps a bomb, or poison, or any number of other methods.)

I am tired of these stories. I am tired of the shield rattling. I am tired of the "Ra Ra Rah!" And gung-ho idiocy of both sides.

In cases like these, there are *ONLY* victims. There are no bad guys, unless you care to look in the mirror. Our blind complacency to the sufferings of others is what CAUSES this shit. Everything about this story is tradgedy. Stop looking for a fucking scapegoat.

Seriously. It confuses the fuck out of my why it always must be so, that we all lose our minds over this, and dive headfirst from the frypan into the fire.

See that little pipsqueek on the far right? That's what comes out of the "assault rifle" the killer from this story used. It is literally the size of 3 BBs glued together, with a few grams of powder behind it. Cartridge and all, it weighs less then 20 grams.

Yeah, no.

The round used by the primary firearm in this incident was, according to all the reports I've seen, the.223, aka the 7th round in your chart labeled "5.56 x 45 Nato." There's an important digit of distinction between a.22 and a.223. The projectile is only slightly wider, sure, but it has a lot more mass (approx double) and is moving at a much higher velocity (around 900-940 m/s vs 300-500 m/s).

For pedantics,.223 and 5.56 are not the exact same thing, but they're externally the same, i.e. the same size cartridge (casing and bullet). The interior volume of the 5.56 round is smaller, and can create slightly larger chamber pressures when fired in a gun designed solely for.223.

Not that it matters, but I'm a certified firearms instructor (certified to teach pistol, rifle, home firearm safety and personal protection) and strong advocate that the concepts being banded about for "gun control" are absolutely ludicrous at best, but that's not relevant to this specific bit of misinformation.

I just read this entire thread and find it fascinating. There are some well thought out arguments on both sides. One thing I have not seen mentioned is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Guard_(Israel) [wikipedia.org] . This is a volunteer force, administered by the police. One of the areas they protect is schools and kindergartens. The volunteers are screened, get training, and provide a first line of defense until the troops show up. They have over 50,000 in the force out of a population of 7.7 million. If we had the same percentage in the USA we would have over 20 million people helping with security and crime.
I'm interested in what this community thinks. Would/Could this work in the USA? Would you volunteer for 12 hours/month?

Indeed, if there were any signs to be gleaned from his computer, it doesn't matter since they'll be ignored anyway

One would hope so.

The alternative is even more government intrusion into your computers and communications.

The fact that he did destroy them suggests he knew there was stuff on them which might be of use to the police. Since he obviously intended to take his own life, none of this could be used against him personally. One has to wonder if he had fellow travelers in his journey to insanity that he thought he could protect via destruction.

I'm sure he was fully aware that the authorities and the media would try to understand him. I'd guess his intent was to do something horrible, hitting the most vulnerable part of society in order to inflict maximum pain. That he could leave everyone with questions to which they'd never have answers was the final aspect of his plan.

The trouble with 'warning signs' when it comes to events like this is we are talking about a FP/TP ratio of possibility millions to one... meaning that as indicators of mass shootings, they are completely useless.

Now, they might have utility in getting people help that would increase their quality of life or of that around them.. but more likely they would just be used to crack down on people who are already having trouble...

The trouble with 'warning signs' when it comes to events like this is we are talking about a FP/TP ratio of possibility millions to one... meaning that as indicators of mass shootings, they are completely useless.

Now, they might have utility in getting people help that would increase their quality of life or of that around them.. but more likely they would just be used to crack down on people who are already having trouble...

FP/TP Ratio? So people with a high First Post to Third Post ratio are more likely to be killers? I knew it....

But when questioned further, they'll all remember tons of warning signs that they ignored, because nobody gives a shit until somebody starts killing.

The problem with 'warning signs' is that(without a much larger and better constructed study population, which you would be unlikely to get) is selection bias: It is, indeed, very unlikely that somebody who goes in and shoots up the place acted 100% normally in the time leading up to doing so. However, without doing an equally-invasive-and-thorough investigation of a fairly large number of demographically similar non-shooters, how do you separate signal from noise?

Practically any instance of assholery, alienation, or general dark muttering looks like a 'warning sign' once you've gone and emptied a few magazines into cowering elementary school children; but that is diagnostically useless unless you have reason to suspect that a given behavior doesn't show up(or shows up orders of magnitude less frequently) in non spree shooters.

The guy killed 28 people, including 20 small kids, in a international media circus that included the personal attention of the POTUS. Every single piece of that hard drive is in an FBI clean lab with specialists trying every trick they know, and NSA consultants coming in just to see if they help. If there's anything the FBI and NSA specialists can't figure out, any university in the country will be happy to lend whatever professor is most appropriate out, and the national intelligences services of any county in western world and a good chunk of the developing world will be available for consult should it be required.

Trust me, for something like this, resources are not going to be an issue.

In all seriousness, it's fairly likely that it did. The guy was a diagnosed aspie and was reputed at high school to be a computer genius. Which doesn't mean he was a computer genius, but it does make it likely that he was not only running Windows. Who knows, he may even have had a slashdot account.

Eh, even frat bros have xboxes now. I'm pretty sure that you have to be able to type in 'HTML Machine Language' in order to be a computer genius these days... Taking the side panel off your case and just running it that way is also useful, like growing a beard if you want to be taken seriously in the humanities.

It was motivated by availability of guns.No, wait -- because of mental illness issues in America.No, wait -- because of video games.Wait, wait, -- I mean, because of goths.Wait, no, I mean it was because of music.What am I saying? I meant to say it was because of movies and television.Oh, geeze, I forgot -- it's because "they took god out of schools".Oh, whoops. No, it's because not enough people at the school were armed.Uh oh, no it's because of the evil internet.No, no, no -- it's because of bad parenting.Oh, boy, it's actually because he was a loner and didn't fit in.No, wait a minute -- it's clearly because of bullies.

Or maybe everyone on the planet should shut the fuck up, grow up, and acknowledge that fucked up shit happens that is beyond our control and you can't blame freak occurrences into never happening and therefore somehow assuring eternal safety. People will lose their shit. Nature will throw something totally fucked at you. Accidents will happen. Mistakes will be made. Instead of realizing fucked up shit happens, we aid those trying to manipulate these freak events to push their personal agendas by somehow trying to reverse-engineer a stream of chaos -- which butterfly's flapping wings in the world lead to the hurricane?

we gut mental healthcare safety nets, and healthcare in general we don't care about

we flood society with guns

and here we have a deranged person with a gun. it's called cause and effect. of course lanza can happen anywhere in the world, but because of american society, adam lanza becomes more likely here

adam lanza as a phenomenon says a lot of about the USA's culture and priorities in regards to healthcare and guns, and less about humanity in general

and we as americans can do something about it, by emphasizing healthcare as the solution to our problems, and deemphasizing guns as the solution to our problems, and we can make adam lanzas less likely to happen

I am still totally perplexed as to why rational thinking people could consider a law giving the right to bear arms, written in the days where arms meant sabres, brown bess muskets and the occasional long rifle (half a century before the invention of the Minié ball or rotating bolt) entitles them to buy AR-15 rifles and automatic handguns.

It's clear the intent of the founding fathers was to provide the people with the ability to overthrow the government. If you only allow people to have sabres and muskets in this age that clearly isn't following the intent. Automatic weapons are necessary to even have a chance.

However, I think we should definitely consider whether that is still necessary. Our democracy has had a long history of success and we have resolved many tough issues peacefully. We should repeal the second amendment. That doesn't mean that all guns would be illegal, but it would mean the government has the power to regulate them.

Gun control won't reduce the number of people 'losing their shit' and going berserk. It will however, limit the amount of damage they can do before being contained. It's much harder to murder 20 plus people with a hunting knife before someone steps in and stops you.

You got the first sentence right, but then you went and blew it with the following sentences.

How could gun control...or even a ban on guns...ever possibly stop a nutcase who won't obey any laws from obtaining a gun? Do you think more regulations, restrictions, or bans will halt the availability? With some 200 million guns already out there?

Heroin and cocaine are illegal, and up till recently, marijuana was too. Didn't seem to stop anyone from obtaining those things. They've pretty much already admitted bans don't and won't work with the current movement of government towards decriminalization of marijuana.

Just as with recreational drug bans and alcohol prohibitions, the people that you'd most want to NOT have them will be the ones that have them and sell them.

Which came first? The nutcase? Or the nutcase getting their hands on a gun? Check the facts. The number of mass murders by gun are actually down. We are in a 40-year low in violent crime.

The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession.

In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States.

And to those who try to characterize the 2nd Amendment right as some sort of "hunter's rights" and thus attempt to justify their desire to severely restrict who may own, and what types of firearms that may be legally owned, to licensed hunters with single-shot rifles and shotguns, you are wrong.

The 2nd Amendment was PRIMARILY about ensuring US citizens could do one thing above and beyond all others; Overthrow the US government by killing _people_. Not Bambi. People. Government people.

Hunting and personal defense are merely nice side-benefits.

The problem is not guns. It's the crazies. The Left battled mightily and won in the '70s and '80s to have mental patients out walking the streets instead of being institutionalized. What the ~fuck~ did you people EXPECT to happen? Hello? McFly?

Now it looks like the Left wants to turn the entire country into a mental institution and all the citizens disarmed and treated as dangerous mental patients rather than admit their screwed-up, blind-ideology-based policies are to blame.

Seeing and doing are two different things, however we live in a nation of retards, so every time something bad happens, the tards come out in force with their "ideas".

My thoughts are it's a tragedy, there was a time you could walk into a school without a visitor badge to pick somebody up, it's not the guns that are to blame, it's the fact that we as a society are producing people who go out into their neighborhoods and do such things. I don't hear anybody proposing a solution for that.

The new DSM is problematic, just as the last one was. Yes, it's certainly possible to abuse it. But the psychiatrists really are trying to help people, and they're just beginning to explore a difficult new field.

The range of human behavior is far, far more variable and intricate than any protein or subatomic particle. A century ago the science was nonexistent, then barbaric, then more harmful than helpful. Now occasionally it does more good than harm. If you don't like your shrink, get a new one. But rejecting the whole profession is just... well, paranoid.

The DSM was not concocted as part of a plot to lock people up. Its goal is to help. It may not, and that's why there's a DSM-6 already in the works. That's how science works.

Aspergers has ZERO to do with the killer's rampage. I have a son with Asperger's (yes, diagnosed by a doctor and, no, it wasn't an easy process to figure out what was going on with him) and I can tell you that the nature of Asperger's is completely counter to something like this.

First of all, people think Asperger's means a lack of empathy. It doesn't, though. It's a lack of an ability to pick up on social cues. My son can't tell if his endless story about the video game he's playing is boring you or if you are riveted. Communication is 20% words and 80% non-verbal. Aspies have trouble deciphering the latter 80%. Imagine trying to read Slashdot posts/comments with only 1 out of every 5 letters in place. C____ __u ____y __ _n_ __ ___m? O_ _____d ___ __t___a_ __o_ ___ __n____a___n? (i.e. Could you reply to any of them? Or would you withdraw from the conversation?) Aspies might withdraw simply because they don't understand how to respond/interact, but they *WANT* to participate.

In addition, Aspies tend to be over-sensitive to the emotions of others once they are told about them. If you tell an Aspie they they offended you with somthing they did, the Aspie will likely feel awful. They might not know how to "make it better", and might withdraw more for fear of making more mistakes, but don't mistake withdrawal for lack of empathy.

Finally, I've found that Aspies (like my son) tend to be sticklers for the rules. They find comfort in rules and get upset when people violate them. So an Aspie isn't likely to plan something that completely "violates the rules" to the degree that a mass shooting does. (They might not get subtle social cues, but they understand that hurting people is wrong.)

Anyone who tries to link mass shootings (including this one) to Asperger's/Autism is just displaying a vast lack of understanding of what Asperger's/Autism is.

The end of the world will come when a introverted former postal employee + warcraft fan writes a ReiserFS IFS driver for windows and proceeds to install mcafee on first successfull boot while listening to linkin park.

I mean, yeah, DBAN would nuke data... but that takes HOURS when I can drill, shoot, or microwave a drive in minutes. Even an oven to degauss would be quicker.

Shattering a hard drive immediately takes it beyond all off-the-shelf forensics providers without leaving any doubts about the firmware, disk recovery sectors, MBR backups... It also takes it beyond the capabilities of most agencies that aren't commercial. You simply *can't* plug it into a purchased capture device at that point.

Yes, it's theoretically possible to recover it with cleanroom techniques at that point... but I'm pretty sure recovery is exactly...that... theory -- when you're pulling dust, debris, and shards of glass out of it... And even if it's not -- it's a massive time difference.

Are you trying to allude to the cloud data that should exist? I think half the point of the physical destruction was to delay and wholly prevent discovering any cloud sources he may have used as long as possible.

They'll have to get his email address from friends and family now, look up the logs, check with the ISP for any traffic from that originating address... look for any traffic on a huge list of known providers from the same address...filter that down.

Unless his ISP has incredible capture, it's going to be near impossible to find what website or forums he's visited in a timely manner... much less chat programs or other likely mediums like WoW/Ventrilo

Their best bet is probably actually checking the home router to see if it has logs or DNS cached...

The fact that he tried to physically destroy things means he isn't nearly as smart as they want us to believe. They'll get quite a bit of it back. And more than likely will be able to get a pretty good profile of him by sequestering logs from various services, be it ISP, Xbox Live, etc.

Ah, no, they will get nothing back.

There is a huge myth [heliosdf.com] around data recovery from physically damaged hard disk drives that all stems from an article written by Peter Gutmann as a research paper.In the real world (Even the NSA's real world) this can not be done [nber.org].

They have a much better chance of getting something back from the nvram in a cell phone uses as a clay pigeon.

Great. I was wondering what it would take for the Slashdot crowd to pervert this dipshit into a hero.

"Dude, check it out! He destroyed all his data before he did this! That way, them dirty screws in law enforcement won't ever know a thing about him, won't understand what happened, and won't have any way to prevent it from happening again! Yeah! That's so awesome! Power to the privacy! Privacy rights for all! Woo!"

Attempting to smash up his PC and HDD and leaving the wreckage in his place is about the most n00bish form of data destruction you can imagine, and has probably only been partially successful at best. I'll leave it to the numerous other comments already posted to detail this sick kid's failure to cover his tracks adequately. If you're going to irresponsibly portray privacy and security advocates as paranoid deviants who cheer mass murder, you're going to need to try harder.

The fingerprints on his keyboard and they way the letters are worn will show which keys he used most

CSI: NCIS New Miami York has determined that he used R S T L N E keys more than others, this has determined that he was likely an English speaker and had a real hard on for Vanna White. This attack may have been a plea for help after his failed attempt to get on Wheel of Fortune.